Filtrbox announces funding

Another of the TechStars companies from 2007, Filtrbox announced this week at Venture Capital in the Rockies that it has closed its seed financing round which was led by Flywheel Ventures and True Ventures. Several angel investors also participated. Ari Newman, Founder and CEO of Filtrbox said “We could not be happier with the investors we have brought together and are excited to have support from both the Rocky Mountain region and Silicon Valley.”

Filtrbox is a business-grade content monitoring service, targeted at SMBs and professionals. The goal of Filtrbox is to sort through all the noise and deliver only the most critical content from both mainstream and new media sources. I’ve been using Filtrbox since the early prototype came out this summer at TechStars. Back then Filtrbox only supported email and I quickly became addicted to my “critical morning briefing” showing me just the most relevant and influential articles related to TechStars and other topics I was monitoring closely. The FiltrRank technology which drives the scoring of the articles can be tweaked by your explicit and implicit feedback over time, eliminating noisy false positives. Today, Filtrbox includes multiple delivery options, filter definition sharing, and more - but I have to admit that I’m still addicted to that simple daily email.

Filtrbox is close to extending their private beta, and is now allowing sign-ups which will be activated as they do so. Congratulations to Ari and Tom and the team at Filtrbox.

Just a quick reminder: TechStars for a Day is on March 5th. If you’re planning to join us, please submit your TechStars 2008 application by March 3rd. Remember, attendance at TechStars For A Day is absolutely not required for acceptance into TechStars this summer. But it can’t hurt!

If you have already applied, you should have received your invitation. If you haven’t, please let us know.

We hope to see you soon.

At TechStars, a frequent question that we get from potential applicants concerns age. TechStars doesn’t ask for the age of applicants, and does not consider age in its selection criteria. We’ve had applicants as young as 12 years old, and as old as about 75.

Looking at statistics from last year, we’ve accepted founders who are between about 20 years old and about 40 years old into the program. The vast majority of our applicants seem to fall into this age range as well.

We often hear from potential applicants who are teenagers. Often they ask us directly if their age is a limitation. While the answer is “no”, I generally also point out that we’re unlikely to accept applicants who are still in school, for the simple reason that this limits the amount of energy that can and will go into their startup, as they have to share their attention with their schoolwork. As investors, it’s important to us that all of the energy of the founders that we select is going into their startup. It’s the very same concern that we have with applicants who want to keep a “day job”.

We’ve also noticed that many young founders apply alone, without co-founders. I’m not sure why this is, but I’d guess it’s because young entrepreneurs haven’t built up a network of like-minded individuals yet, simply have trouble engaging co-founders due to age differences, or that there are naturally fewer young entrepreneurs that they can identify and associate with in their local area. In any event, single founders are not something we rule out, but it’s certainly a disadvantage.

For those who fall into the “young entrepreneur” category, I highly recommend a book from one of our mentors, Ben Casnocha. Ben is a successful 19 year old entrepreneur and My Startup Life is an excellent read on this subject.

On the other end of the spectrum, we just don’t see nearly as many applications from the 45+ set. I think this is primarily because the value proposition offered by TechStars naturally appeals to younger people.

So, age is not a factor. I’d like to encourage anyone of any age to apply to TechStars. Just make sure that you can dedicate yourself to your startup fully before you apply.

One of the most common questions we get at TechStars is simply “What’s it like?”

In order to try to answer that question a bit more completely, we shot a quick video last week where several of the founders from last summer. Gwen Bell, who was not a founder but who was around some last summer and led “Laptop Yoga” also talks about some of the fun we had at TechStars. We hope the video (below) helps to give you a little better feel for TechStars.

We hope to see your application soon. Remember that the deadline is March 31st, but if you apply by March 3rd, you can get an invitation to TechStars for a Day on March 5th.